Playing outside

Carter and Jami came over Tuesday night and had supper with us. Cade and Carter had a great time playing outside afterwards. The weather was beautiful so Jami, Avery and I had a good time watching them play from our chairs in the shade. They rode the horse and the lawnmower and then I threw balls for them while they played fetch.

So trainable! Carter was so concerned with getting her ball before Cade could she tripped and pretty much went end over end, but got right back up and grabbed her ball without hardly even being fazed at all. I sure miss having Jami next door. She's been gone (six or so miles a way) for about a year now. But it was so fun having her next door and we could just walk over to see each other.

GIDDYUP!!!

Cade got a new (to him) horse from Aunt Nancy and has been having a great time riding it. He climbs on and rides as hard as he can and yells "Giddy up! Giddy up! GIDDYUP!"
So thanks Aunty! His legs aren't quite long enough for his feet to reach the stirrups, but they sit just on top of the blue spring covers and that works great.

McDonalds Supper

Avery is liking her tummy time a lot better and is trying to scoot forward a little bit. Once she is tired she is over it. She has found her screechy voice and yesterday she would just screech over and over as loud as she could, talk about hard on the eardrums.

Rance called me from town Sunday and asked what was for supper, my answer was whatever you are bringing home. Cade was excited for his cheeseburger!

I don't start my new job until December sometime, they aren't sure yet as it all depends on when construction gets finished on the building!

Views from the Back

i took this picture of Avery while helping support her with my other hand. She is getting very determined to stand and to sit. She still needs a lot of work on her balance though. Just lying on the floor all the time is no longer good enough, there is so much to investigate.

This is Cade headed out to play in the sand. We hand a sand box courtesy of my Dad but Rance thought it looked a little too redneck and hauled the big tractor tire away and left the sand hill for Cade to play in. Rance was pretty sure on this day that he was having more fun playing in the sand than Cade was and can't wait to get more trucks to play in it with. Thanks Dad for the sand!

Big News for Christy

Well over a month ago I interviewed for a staff nurse position at the Ambulatory Surgery Center. The Billings Clinic (where I currently am employed in the operating room) is opening a separate outpatient surgery facility sometime early next year. I have been waiting on this it seem like years, from when it was very first rumored to actually breaking ground last November. I want it for a variety of reasons 1. No call. Call is not convenient with little kids. 2. No holidays, not a biggie here we only had holiday call one rarely two holidays a year, but still! 3. No call this means no weekends, no middle of the night, no holidays. Still there are a lot of things I will have to give up that I love doing: total joints, big traumas, scrubbing ortho cases. Not an all around easy decisions but one that seems to fit best where I am in my life with my family.

I FINALLY got the call I had been (not) so patiently waiting for yesterday afternoon and I was offered the position...full time, five days a week for eight hour days. Anyone who knows me know that I have only worked three days a week for about seven years now. I did twelve hour shifts until I had Cade and since I returned to work after having Cade I have only worked three eight hour shifts a week. Plus call. So the thought of five days a week was way too many days at work. Not to mention way to much time away from my two darling babies. So after some deliberation and discussion I called them back today to regretfully turn down the job offer. thanks for thinking I am great, but no thanks on five days a week. I can handle four call days a month in exchange for more time with my little family.

Not long after I left the director a message detailing why I couldn't take the job she called back to say it had been a mistake on the part of the human resources person who called to offer me the job, they are taking me on THREE DAYS A WEEK! I am a little sad to leave so many of the great people I have worked with for the last seven and a half years. They have been great teachers, mentors, and friends. I love my job as it is but I am also excited about a new facility and no call doing basically the same thing with some of the same people! Plus they would always take me back if I hated it, at least I would like to think they would!

Bathtime!

After Avery's messy supper she had to have a bath before bedtime. Cade is a big helper. He likes to help pour the soap under the running wather to make "bubbos".

Avery Starts on Solids

Avery is almost six months old and has been acting very interested in what happens at the dinner table so I introduced rice cereal last week. She did very well with it, in fact better than Cade ever did with it. He is still pretty sure rice cereal is nasty stuff. Last night I introduced sweet potatoes. So got a very surprised look on her face when I put the first spoonful in her mouth and never did quite figure out what to think of them! Notice her little tongue sticking out the corner of her mouth in the picture above. It just looked so goofy I had to post it. The bumbo chair has been wonderful and she is sitting in it really well these days.

My babysitter Landa has been gone last week and this week so I took all but Friday off this week and have been loving the extra time with the kids. I started cleaning out the closet in the office so that in a couple more months Avery can move out of the master bedroom and into her own room. I was going to make the kids share a room, but have changed my mind.

Fun in the Sun

Cade and I were out playing yesterday afternoon while Avery was napping. As you can see driving the lawnmower took some serious concentration. I think he was getting tired of me taking pictures of him. He finally decided that getting in the pool was great fun. He even helped me try to scrub some of the fly poop off of the side of the house. It looks so gross! We got a little section done before we were both bored and hot and headed back to play in the pool. I must admit the pool feels really good. Although I think the person who gets the most use out of it is the dog Cisco.

We also went and visited my friend and coworker Stacy Dean yesterday, her and her husband adopted a baby girl a couple weeks ago and named her Kyann. What a little cutie. She is so tiny. Hard to believe it wasn't that long ago that Avery was that tiny. Now she is almost six months old. Cade had fun playing with Stacy's son Jaxen who will be in the first grade this year.

.

A quick note...

If there are any pictures on the blog you want a copy of for yourself all you have to do is right click with you mouse on the picture and one of the options brought up is "save picture as" choose that option and you should be able to save it on your computer. If it doesn't work, let me know.

Little Cowboy.

Cade loves the horses and has to go say hi to them at least once a day. Better then that is to get to ride them!

More Tummytime Fun

Sometimes Cade likes to get down and encourage Avery when she does tummytime. He'll get down across from her and say "Hi Avery!" After about ten seconds he is over it and on to the next thing. Now and then he will last longer. She really likes the entertainment and seems to like being on her tummy longer when Cade helps her.

And as you can see she is getting stronger and pushing herself up super good!

Yummy Yummy Toes

I finally got some pictures of Avery sucking on her toes. She is proving to be quite flexible.

Cade never sucked on his toes amd I waited and waited for him to do it.

A Big Weekend for Clint and Corinne!

Everett Phillips Hammond born July 11, 2008! He is 21 inches long and I believe 7 lbs 11 oz! A pretty good sized little boy!

The proud Aunties!

The proud and somewhat sleepy looking family!

Cousins come to visit

Cade and Avery's cousins Sidney and Kenzie came to visit for the weekend, with their parents Shawna, Rance's big sis and her husband Ty. We hadn't seen them since Christmas. Cade had a high time. The first night we tired to let them all sleep in Cade's room, but not long after we put them to bed the girls came out and reported that Cade couldn't sleep and Cade ran out of the hall and agreed with an enthusiastic "YEAH!" He thought we were ogres when we made him go to bed by himself. It was already an hour and a half past bedtime!

Watching movies together.

Brushing teeth. This was the best Cade has ever brushed his teeth.

Trying to all sleep in his toddler bed. Notice Sidney's pillow ans blankets on the floor set up next to the bed.

Swimming Party

We took Cade and Avery to a swimming party Monday night in Huntley. Cade was not very impressed and did not want to sit in his floating toy like he was supposed to but perched on top as much out of the water as he could manage. No amount of coaxing could convince him the cold water could actually maybe be a little fun. He wasn't persuaded by all his big cousins who were splashing and having a great time.

Once he got out however he was a lot more cheerful and content to watch the others have fun.

Cousin Garrin and Avery had a little bonding time.

Good Morning Avery

We took these pictures this morning right after Avery woke up. Cade even gave her a morning snuggle.

It's a bubbleosaurus!

Cade took a super duper double bubble bath tonight. He thinks bubbles are pretty cool. I had to bribe him somehow to get excited about taking a bath. He didn't want to take one very bad until we started talking about bubbles. Rance and I were having a hard time remembering when the last time we gave Cade a bath was.

An Armful!

Avery has been working on figuring out her fingers and how they grab things. It is fun to watch her play with toys. She is at the stage where once she gets it in her hands everything goes to the mouth. She can almost roll over from her back to her stomach but not quite. She is sitting really good with support and likes to stand with support of course. It won't be long before she is a mobile baby. Then I will really have double trouble running around the house. YIKES

Sleepy boy

I am on call this weekend and Rance wanted to go riding this morning so I had to get the kids up early and go down to my Mom's house before I was on call at seven. I waited as long as possible to get Cade up. He was sleeping so hard, I went in his room and picked out his clothes thinking that would wake him up, but no. I snapped some pictures of him sleeping and that didn't even wake him up! Rance took him to the rodeo in Red Lodge for the 4th and it must have been quite an adventure. He was worn out! Avery and I stayed home and went to a picnic at Aunty Linda's. We had fun visiting and watching all the big kids run around having fun in the pool. Then we came home, took a nap and cleaned house till the boys came home. Very peaceful!

Cade has been sleeping very good in his "big boy bed". He usually gets up once a night and Rance puts him right back in bed. (Hooray Rance gets to do middle of the night stuff!) He has even had a few nights where he stayed in bed all night. He gets up in the morning, gathers up his blanket or two, and sometimes a stuffed animal and comes strolling out into the living room all pleased with himself. If we aren't up yet it isn't long before we are!

Avery has been in the crib, for at least the first four or five hours of the night. Once she wakes up the first time I just take her into bed with me. Once she nurse she falls back asleep and so do I so she sleeps with me the rest of the night. She is getting so big! Hard to believe she is five months old now.

Chocolate Kisses

I made the mistake of storing a bag of hershey kisses in a drawer Cade can get into. Of course his memory for that sort of stuff is quite sharp!

Cade also decided his Dad made a good chair to sit and unwrap his kisses on. He even gave Rance one to eat. What a good boy for sharing!

Dad also makes a great place to sit and eat them.

What a great Dad!